Ok, so this past weekend while the weather was nice I took the opportunity to haul out the air rifle. I won’t be posting a picture of my target, lets just say it was pretty bad, and not because I was a good shot. Part of the problem was the puppy who was NOT happy about being stuck inside while I was out was barking at odd moments making me twitch (not yet 5 months old and he sounds like a german shepherd, can’t wait to hear him as an adult!), but my hands weren’t happy either (g*d d*$%ed weather) which was making the loading process interesting, and I’m pretty sure I was shakier than usual: something has to explain the issues I was having….. I took 5 shots with the built in fiberoptic sights, first one was less than an inch from the bullseye, not a bad start right? Yah, except every shot from there on out went further and further away…..sigh.
So I gave up on the fiberoptics and attached the scope to play around with for a bit. Please note this is NOT a high end scope by any means. It came with the air rifle and the whole kit cost us just over a $100. Took another 5 shots before I gave up reloading (gonna have to spend some time doing this when the husband’s home so he can reload for me). I’m clearly lost when it comes to scopes. Pretty sure I’m not getting the right angle to look through the thing at first of all because I keep getting the visible circle at odd angles instead of straight ahead, and the instructions that come with it on how to adjust it aren’t the most helpful.
So….anyone reading this have suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong??
Do you have a basement or a garage to practice in so you would be warmer? Air rifles are a great way to learn shooting skills; the more you practice the better you will get.
Is your scope a traditional model with magnification and crosshairs or is it one of those new fangled red dot Aimpoint type of things? For precision shooting, I prefer scopes with reticles (crosshairs).
warm wasn't actually the issue this weekend, rather the wonderfull thunderstorms rolling through combined with me pushing myself to hard to do a specific project at work.
The scope is a traditional one with magnification and crosshairs yes.
Hmmmm… it may have taken a hard knock. Have a couple of other folks give it a try and see if they have the same problem(s). Some of the low end scopes are very hard to use in anything except bright sunlight. I wish you lived next door… I have a few different scopes you could try our for comparison. I'd offer to mail a couple to ya, but they would require zeroing in on your rifle… and the mounts might not fit your gun. I guess in a long winded way I'm saying that I'm not much help on this…
I'll hand it to my father in law lol, he's dying to try the air rifle anyway. An d my husband plans to do his own playing around with it, weather just hasn't cooperated, sunday was nice enough AND he had the day off……except he spent the day on the riding lawn mower attempting to mow as much as possible while the yard was at least sorta dry.
Don't worry about the not much help, if nothing else I can go gripe to the company and see if they'll replace it if my husband has the same problem.
I'm tempted to go buy something a bit nicer anyway since I'm likely to be using the rifle at longer distances anyway. We moved the bird feeder to the back of the house, but the ideal spot is a good 100+ feet from the house and I'm not sure my eyes are good enough to try to aim with just the built in sights at something as small as a squirrel (great hunter I am not, but I'm determined to reduce the squirrel population!)